A Shamekh

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He doesn’t appear very often in fiction, but in these books – by authors ranging from Fyodor Dostoevsky to John Updike – his impact is almighty<p>God seldom features in fiction. Having been dispensed with by Enlightenment <i>philosophes</i> around the time the first novels were emerging, he must have seemed …

These 10 fiction and non-fiction titles rose to the top of the heap for USA TODAY's book reviewers this year.<p><b>1. Lincoln in the Bardo</b> by George Saunders (Random House, fiction)<p>Saunders’ brilliantly imagined novel, both heartbreaking and hilarious, takes place in a cemetery the night Abraham Lincoln …

This was a year when books — like the rest of us — tried to keep up with the news, and did a pretty good job of it. Novels about global interconnectedness, political violence and migration; deeply reported nonfiction accounts of racial and economic strife in the United States; stories both imagined …

The mastermind behind Pizzeria Beddia lets us in on his homemade pizza guidelines.<p>I didn’t start out as some formally trained chef guy. I brewed beer for a living until I was almost 30. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? While I was working at a brewery outside Mito in Japan, I happened to eat the …

<i>We asked some of our contributors for their favorite books they read this year. (Most listed new books, but a few picked older favorites or ones that will come out in the new year.)</i><p>I was riveted by Martin Amis’s <b>“The Zone of Interest,”</b> with its daring projection into the mind and “heart” of a …

Photo: Emily Kate Roemer/Studio D<p><b>Tantalizing Topic</b><p>John McQuaid's <i>Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat</i> (Scribner) mixes science, literature, history, and anecdote in the service of his stellar inquiry into the inner workings of taste, also called flavor, which McQuaid finds to be the most …

It is New Year’s Day and I should be looking forward but I’ve been busy – and delayed by the flu – so I’m not yet done looking back. Listed below with potted reviews are the 23 books I read in 2014. This continues a tradition I started last year, when I decided to read less internet and more …

<i>Originally published on Kirkus</i><p>There’s a striking mix of literary elements that have to be present on a book’s first page for readers to keep turning pages: an intriguing character, suspense, a vibrant writing style. The recently published books on this week’s list, which include fiction, nonfiction …

The bed bug may seem like a recent trend. Even if you haven’t personally suffered an infestation, media coverage of the insect’s comeback has been hard to miss.<p>However, the bed bug is an ancient pest, and our lives have intertwined for millennia. In the late 1990s, for example, archaeologists found …

In 1878 Van Gogh was a struggling would-be preacher. At his lowest ebb, he began to draw. Alastair Sooke looks back at this pivotal moment in history.<p>In the spring of 1878, Vincent van Gogh turned 25. As he looked back over his short life, the Dutchman found little to celebrate among the meagre …

While light appears to show up instantaneously when you flick a switch, it actually takes time to get to your eyes. It just moves so fast we don't notice. This is why it's been so hard to catch light on the move in a video — it's moving so fast even regular high-speed cameras can't catch it.<p>To …

What will our space ambitions actually look like a decade from now? Three experts tell Richard Hollingham.<p>Space has not been this exciting since the 1960s.<p>Nasa recently launched Orion, its first new spacecraft to carry astronauts since the Space Shuttle, and is developing a massive new rocket to …

Hello, dwarf planet<p>NASA's Dawn mission has beamed back the best-ever view of a 'planet' between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft is just 147,000 miles and a few months shy of reaching Ceres, the largest unexplored rock between the Sun and Pluto. (Though the 590-mile-wide rock is officially …